


silver

by sinagtala (strikinglight)



Series: kiss prompts [6]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Early in Canon, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Pre-Canon, Rain, Unresolved Romantic Tension, very bad fluff-angst whiplash tbh i'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:37:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/sinagtala
Summary: She wants to say,Come stand by me.She wants to ask,Are you still my friend?





	silver

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by Winny, for prompt #15: kiss in the rain. The kiss is an imaginary thing, but Eirika's negotiation of things changing from part to part was the most important aspect of this to me.
> 
> Eirika is a wonderfully complex consciousness to inhabit and I would love to write more of her soon. \o/

The first of the spring rains catches them out in the marketplace.

There are silk ribbons in Eirika’s basket because last night her father had given her a handful of coins and told her she might have a pretty thing, now and again; she is especially happy with the ivory one she’s chosen for herself, and with the pale yellow one Seth counselled for the summer. The prettiest of all, the wide-banded royal blue one, is for Ephraim—who, after perhaps some token grousing and protesting that ribbons are for girls, will wear it proudly pinned over his heart or tied around his arm over the sleeve of his doublet, because it came from her.

She feels the first drops patter against the crown of her head and looks around, fretful—first upward, at the darkening sky, then down at her basket of delicate silks, then at his face. He doesn’t speak, but in two heartbeats his cloak is off his shoulders and draped over her head and the basket both, and he is letting her take his arm to keep her footing sure across the wet cobblestones, and they are walking back to the castle side by side, though she has to take two steps for every stride of his.

The rain stops by the time they make it home, as though the sky has just finished telling a joke.

“Thank you, Seth.” Because the words seem somehow insufficient, she hands back his cloak before reaching into her basket to pull out a ribbon—a length of dove grey satin, rippling glossy and nearly silver between her fingertips—and offering it to him. “You always help me.”

He accepts her gift with a smile, though his eyes are solemn as she remembers them being before the court when he took his vows, not long ago. “I will always be your friend, Princess Eirika.

“I have your promise, then,” Eirika says, standing like a queen two steps above him on the front stairs of the castle, and he laughs as the last of the raindrops drip from the ends of his hair.

 

* * *

 

The villages still standing at Ide have no inns and no beds to spare, so their small force makes camp in the valley instead, among the ruins. As dusk darkens to twilight, Eirika wanders among the broken houses, unable to quiet the gnawing in her gut threatening to hollow her out, little by little, at every caved-in roof, every wall crumbled away to expose what might have been a life once, upended tables and smashed chairs sticking out through the gaps like exposed bone.

Seth comes to find her at the same time the thunder does, with a lantern in one hand. Eirika stands under the half-collapsed awning of a shop and says nothing, merely watches the raindrops speckle the glass casing, distorting the shadows the flame casts on his face, bending them so that they cut under his eyes and across his cheeks like scars.

He is changed of late, but maybe so is she. She cannot at the moment find the words to articulate how. She does not understand what it means to know your duty and still be unable to see the way to go, as all around the darkness gathers.

“Is there anything I can do for you, milady?”

Maybe. She wants to say, _Come stand by me._ She wants to ask, _Are you still my friend?_ To be very honest, she wants to drag him down by the collar, weeping, and kiss him until he’s a person again, breathing and alive and made of skin and bone and saltwater and stiff, awkward angles that never fall together quite right. Because nothing is right. Because there must be a time and place for things she thought she’d never be able to do or say, and it feels like even the here and now are uncoiling in her grasp, unraveling into a tangle of brittle, fraying threads.

In the end, she does not do any of the things that she wants to do. She is older now than she was, more alone, no longer so fearless, so she does not.

“I don’t know,” Eirika says, truthfully. “I don’t think so.”

But neither does she tell him to go, and he will not leave her, so he stands behind her in silence as the clouds thicken overhead and the rain comes down in a hail of needles. Eirika follows their path with her eyes, pointed and shimmering and cold—and silver, silver in the fading light.


End file.
